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This thread is to be used for discussing the entire 12 episodes of TWGOK ... your thoughts about the show, overall impressions, expectations and hopes about the DVD only footage etc.

A few subjects you might want to ramble on about:
General impression of the series.
Opinions on the overall story, writing & plot devices.
Thoughts about the animation quality.
Characters/Character Design
Voice Acting

Which kind of footage (DVD only) you feel you'd really like to see.
What the show meant to you.
What could the creators/animators/writers have done better.

And so on.

The poll represents your total series rating. In other words, how you would rate all the episodes combined (1-12) If you'd rather rate the whole series by technical/artistic merits, you can do so. An example:

Animation Quality: 7 - animation was not great, but not that bad either. Some episodes were really good, others less. Overall it was average for this kind of series. About the character design, in general it was nice enough, but in some episodes it was really off. Besides...where was my beloved super-deformed style from the manga?
Voice Actors: 8 - I'm probably one of the few people who think Hiro Shimono wasn't a bad choice for Keima, he did a good job, idem the rest of the seyuu.
Script/editing: 5 - as adaptation, I think they failed overall. To be faithful to the original source in the main contents is not enough to get a good adaptation. Here the direction was really wrong. Slow pacing, useless filler scenes, comedy and characters flatter than in the manga...They really missed the right way to portray the brilliant humour of the original work.
Soundtrack: 7 - the opening is amazing, but they misplaced some pieces of it during the episodes...And I was annoyed by all the characters songs they put here and there, only for advertising. BGM's were decent.
Enjoyment: 5 - Some episodes were really dragged out and boring. I'd never thought they could make this series boring, because the manga is absolutely funny to me.
Emotional Involvement: 5 - I was just bored most of the time.

Very, very unfortunate... Especially the second half. The first half wasn't bad, and the arc for Mio was done very well. Mio's arc was just done so great...
Then Kanon's arc... Shiori's arc... So bad... so dragged out... So... so... Hah...

LC was cute.
The OP was cool.
Mio's arc was good.
That's about it.

So 7/10.
Maybe 6 would have been more suited...

Anyways, hope the 2nd cour (split) will get it together.

__________________

-Blog --> http://tdnshumi.blogspot.com/ (Mainly about video games)
-R.I.P. Hiroshi Yamauchi, Gaming wouldn't have been the same without you (9/19/13)

As usual serenade_beta opinion is almost an antithesis of mine. I found the anime additions in Kanon's and Shiori's arc to be extremely well done and insightful of the characters, while I found Mio's arc to be an OK adaptation. Still, I know that the best in the series is yet to come, so I will refrain from giving any rating for what we've seen so far.

I had some trouble writing my overall impressions for the first of this anime. It mostly had to do with trying to divorce my thoughts about the anime on it's own merits and what I thought about it from the position of someone who is a huge fan of the source material. The reason for trying to keep the two separate is for a couple of reasons, the first is that I don't think I can give a fair impression of the anime if I compare it to the manga when it has arguably done several things in a different way and gave it's slightly different interpretations on some characters, and also that I think that the execution of certain arcs makes it better to judge them on their own.

So starting off from what I thought was the anime's strong point, the sound quality.

The BGM of this show is, without a doubt, excellent. I don't believe I read anyone complain about it. Every track was was wonderfully composed, and Hayato Matsuo's score helped enhance every climactic scene of each arc in a way that made them superior and more engaging than they might've been without the music. Outside of the end of each arc, the daily tracks were well done on their own, but the placement of the tracks were at times weak and made some scenes lose some impact, despite how solid score is.

''God Only Knows'' was a really great intro for the anime. Even though it had a bit of engrish to it, it's wasn't as bad as a song by MELL, and a majority of lyrics were understandable. The song itself fit the show quite well, with an almost heavenly orchestra feeling to it. The ending being sung by the main five girls, was also very good and upbeat, and if I had to say which one I liked the most, it would be the Elise/Kanae Ito take on the song (of course, the special endings triumph over all of them, especially for Sora and for the last episode)

The insert songs on the other hand ... were more hit-and-miss for myself. I already mentioned how I didn't like how over saturated Kanon's arc was with all of these songs, and how I thought that they were poorly used (with the possible exception of episode 8, as I did think that the music placement for that particular episode was the best for the entire first season) but the songs themselves are quite nice at times and I admitted that my dislike for VA sung music might be colouring my judgement in this case.

The VA for the anime were largely fitting for their role. Kanae Ito as Elise was easily the best out of every performance, as had been said ever since it was announced. I ended up warming up to Hiro Shimono as Keima, even though I thought at first that he would at best do a decent job, at the end I thought he really managed to do a good take on Keima (though his constant shouting really did get annoying after a while, but that had more to do with the script he was working with). Kana Hanazawa as Shiori I'm not so sure about, as while Kana is a good VA, I didn't really imagine her voicing a character like Shiori. Still, she had done a good job much like the rest of the cast.

Moving on to the visuals, I thought that the anime looked good enough, with the colouring of the characters and setting being great overall, even though the backgrounds themselves didn't really leave any lasting impression. The animation was also competently done through out the show, with nothing standing out (be it bad or good) and keeping the same level of quality between episodes.

The designs for the characters were also the same as the animation for a good chunk of them. Keima, his mother, Ayumi, Mio and Kanon were faithful to the original designs. Certain ones such as Elise and Shiori ended up looking better than their manga counterparts (Elise especially was far cuter in the anime, increase in bust size aside :P) however, other were much noticeably worse. And not comparatively to the original designs. The two that I was really annoyed with were Nikaido's and Kodama's (coincidently both teachers) Nikaido ended up looking very ugly looking in the first episode, mainly due to the lighting effect they had on her face where half of her face ended up looking paler than the other half, giving her a very unappealing look. Worse still was that they didn't really fix that problem for her later appearances so she always ended up looking the worst out of everyone.

Even though there were two misses with the designs, the rest looked fine and they had two hits with Elise and Shiori so I suppose it evens out in the end.

And then the plot and characters themselves, arguably the most important part of the show. As I mentioned earlier the anime had taken a few liberalities on certain area's (expanding on Kanon's background, Kemia more obsessive behaviour) as well as extending the stand alone episodes. As such, something ended up being somewhat different from the manga's original take.

The ''fillers'' or inbetweeners were pretty enjoyable, I thought. While I do have reservations on the amount of time given to them (especially the bugged game taking an entire episode to do, as while I did think it was funny, I thought they stretched the joke a little thin) they actually got the comedy (or to be exact, the comedic timing) right a lot of the time, as obsessed to the ''arcs'' where it felt like the comedy took a back seat to the romance. Thanks to the girls, luckily that wasn't a major problem as their quirkiness helped generate enough light-hearted moments to keep thing balanced.

The rest of the cast is pretty colourful. Each one of them has a likeable part about them and they are each have a unique personality. Despite the little time she had Ayumi left a really good impression on me, mainly due to her quirky nature and her arc giving me a very 80's romantic anime vibe (which is also another plus for this anime the ''old school'' feeling it gave off during the girls arc) Mio arc I thought was the best paced one (with an episode and a half) though I didn't really care for Mio herself much from what I've seen. While both of them were good introductory arcs for the show, they also gave the impression that this was a Girl-of-the-week show, which I admit very unappealing, as the girls are treated as simple targets for Kemia to win and then move on (There was some attempt to lessen that impression at the epilogue of each arc, with how Keima congratulated Ayumi) So when both Kanon's and Shiori's arc end up being 3 episodes each, that should've fixed that issue by giving each one of them time to flesh out their characters.

Except that wasn't how it went.

Honestly, I'm mixed on the way these arcs had been handled. I agree with Proto that it is a good idea to have the girls get more time to explore their problem and personalities and actually treat them as characters rather than targets (which I thought Shiori's arc done extremely well). And yet, I couldn't help but feel that they gave them too much time when they could've give them the same amount of development with less episodes (which is my opinion of Kanon's, and where my opinion overlaps with serenade_beta)

It might very well be that my opinion of the two girls that is the reason for why I thought on arc was better than the other despite having the same length. I like Shiori, I thought that her inability to express herself due to her shyness was very relatable, and the amount of attention given to this point made the final episode of her arc where she barricaded the library (setting her foot down on protecting what she loved despite being afraid and extremely shy) all the more admirable. This made me cheer her all the more when she finally spoke up and defended her view at the end. The level of care that went into giving us insight into her state of mind was also appreciated as we saw how engrossed she was into her books and the amount of information she had. The imaginary sequences also helped show us why she was so in love with this world, much like Keima, but unlike him we got a backstory to explain why she regressed into that state in the first place (a point where she actually receives more attention that even the main lead, who seems to be obsessed with games for no reason). They had used the time given to her to completely flesh her out completely.

Which isn't something I could say for Kanon's arc. To be truthful, I felt that sitting through Kanon's arc was like watching Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, where it really felt for a good half of the arc I was watching a collection of music videos than an actual show. Now that isn't entirely true mind you as I really like Michael Jackson while I'm apathetic to Kanon. In my view, she is a diva through and through, as despite having all the attention in the world she might crave and want, she would still run away on the day where thousands of her loyal fans showed up just because one guy didn't give her the time of day. I can understand how her past made her develop a complex to constantly fear being ignored, but her desire to have every single person in the world love her to the point of harming anyone who ignores her didn't sit well with me to say the least.

That being said,both of them where the most developed out of the entire cast (Shiori more so) including the two leads. While there isn't much to Elise herself (she's hardworking, cute and tries her best) I was surprised that we got no explanation for Keima's unhealthy obsession with games (which might've been fine if they just used it from a comedic angle only) but the final episode of the season had some disturbing implications there as to how far he was willing to go for his games. He was literally fainting from exhaustion and started hallucinating at several points during his run, and that made question why he was this obsessed about games. Sure they might explore this point later, but I would've liked to get some sort of reason or hint to it.

In short
Being a huge fan of the manga, and having had great hopes for the anime, I wont deny that it fell short of my expectations. However, I wont say I was disappointed by what I saw or that I thought it was a bad show. On the contrary, I thought that this was a good solid show, just had they worked out the comedy bits better it could've been a really great show. Hopefully they work out those kinks in the second season.

ill give it an overall rating of 3, and thats being genrous i think ^_- . they pick a horible voice actor for Keima. and they took the wrong parts of the manga to animate. the only saving grace is the nice portrayal by Aoyama Mios seiyu

I think the start-off season was great and was followed by a great sequel.
I had some great laugh at some parts and the all-amazing quote: "I see it... the ending!" was just that. :D
I give it a 10, great work.

When I first watched Kami Nomi I wasn't too impressed and wasn't wowed like I was with more traditional romance. But after rewatching it I've found the series to be very solid and lacking in any major flaws. More thoughts below...

Spoiler for Length:

Harem anime usually have the problem of deciding how its story is going to be told. If it decides to have the hero focus on one heroine, the other girls are left out and it alienates anyone who would have preferred the hero to be with another heroine (single route). Some harem anime have addressed the bad side of this approach by giving each heroine a self-contained arc within the series to develop a romance for each of them and it pleases more viewers. But the hero’s development resets at the start of every heroine’s story arc (omnibus format).

Kami Nomi zo Shiru Sekai solves the problem of how a harem anime tells its story because of the story itself. The series revolves around Keima Katsuragi and a demon girl Elcea de Rux Ima (Elsie) who hunt and capture Loose Souls that have possessed people—all girls—by using the emptiness in their hearts. To drive out and capture a Loose Soul from its host, the emptiness in their hearts needs to be filled with love—cue Keima’s romantic involvement. When a Loose Soul is driven out and captured, the girl loses all of her memories about Keima and the Loose Soul possessing her.

The brilliance of the story is twofold: The romantic interest built up for each heroine is self-contained (omnibus format) while still affecting Keima and Elsie’s development throughout the show (single route). It’s the best of a self-contained story and a continuous story.

But having the best of both worlds presents its own problems. As a continuous story, Keima repeatedly falling in love stretches the suspension of disbelief even by anime standards and such a problem doesn’t happen in single route harem anime. As a self-contained story, let it be known the omnibus format has its own problems of trying to properly develop each heroine within a limited time span. Fortunately, the heroines are all developed as much as two or three episodes will allow. And while they aren’t the most complex characters around, they don’t need to be when they’re all distinct from each other to please the heroine taste of as many viewers as possible. Added with the limited amount of time Keima spends with each heroine in-universe and it’s apparent they couldn’t be developed as much as one might want because of those time constraints.

Visually there’s not much to talk about. The colors and designs vibrantly represent all of the characters whether it’s the normally apathetic-to-the-real-world Keima, the bubbly could-bounce-anywhere Elsie, or even the placid and unassuming Shiori. There’s nothing to fault here but nothing that stands out too much either. Audio-wise, the music track that sticks out the most is the one that plays whenever Keima successfully romances a heroine; most of the show’s music is noticeable in every scene but not enough to stand on its own while occasionally using a lack of music to good effect.

The show isn’t anything more than good but that isn’t a criticism against it. After all, it’s uncommon for a story itself to address the storytelling problems a harem anime usually has. Being a combination of the single route and omnibus format approach lets the series take a unique role as a show that finds success from being a hybrid of two very different ways of storytelling. Kami Nomi zo Shiru Sekai’s lack of flaws of and solid strengths make it a very solid anime that can be enjoyed by almost anyone.

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Do you know what's the most important thing about climbing mountains?
It's not about having the courage to challenge it
It's about having the courage to back down
~Nozomi Tōjō